How we can beat these evil butchers: MAX HASTINGS says GCHQ are our best hope of keeping Britain safe from murderous Islam

The Tunisian massacre has prompted a surge of shock and revulsion throughout Britain, exactly as its perpetrator and his kind want.

It follows many other such assaults on Westerners in France, Kenya, Bali, Egypt.

In open societies, such attacks are easy: All that is needed is a handful of fanatics who believe that murdering unbelievers of both sexes and all ages will secure them a place in paradise, and who do not even need sophisticated weapons.

In mourning: The Tunisian massacre has prompted a surge of shock and revulsion throughout Britain

So how does the West respond? Already there are cries for men and tanks to be deployed against ISIS in Iraq and Syria; warnings that we are plunged into a historic confrontation with Islam.

There is intense pressure on the British government to be seen to take some action in the face of unprovoked horror.

It is hard for ministers to keep their heads in turmoil and outrage, but they must do so, and we can help them.

Western Powers should take action only if we can be reasonably sure that it will make things better and not worse.

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It is hard to fight non-state enemies, such as ISIS, which are impervious to conventional military and economic sanctions.

Western intelligence and air power are already doing everything possible to choke the movement’s cash stream, kill its leaders with drone strikes, and target its vital installations, such as they are.

Calls to deploy thousands of Western troops in Iraq or Syria seem wholly mistaken.

Unless there is a credible local government to support, as there is not in Baghdad or Damascus, a Western army would pick up exactly where we left off five years ago, trying to impose order across a vast region largely hostile to Westerners.

GCHQ's task has been made more difficult by the revelations from Moscow of the American traitor Edward Snowden (pictured), who has alerted the world’s terrorists to their vulnerability to eavesdropping

Whose side would we be on? The Iranian militias which are assisting the Iraqis to fight ISIS are conducting killings of civilians as merciless as those of the Islamists.

We can only give active military support to factions such as Iraq’s Kurds, who are civilized, pro-Western and broadly democratic.

We can aid some other ISIS enemies by providing them with weapons, training, intelligence and air support. Special forces, the SAS and SBS, can play a useful role.

Let us not get involved in another big ground war in the Middle East without a comprehensible or credible objective, merely to lash out at the killers of Western tourists

I am no pacifist, and would support a large-scale military campaign if it seemed likely to do any good.

But for heaven’s sake let us not get involved in another big ground war in the Middle East without a comprehensible or credible objective, merely to lash out at the killers of Western tourists.

The good news about ISIS is that neither now nor in the imaginable future does it represent an existential threat to our society as did Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

It can cause us grief and pain by murdering innocents, but it cannot inflict serious damage on Western societies.

We face rabbles of murderous criminals, not a coherent enemy power capable of invading us or wrecking our cities.

We must capture or kill ISIS terrorists wherever we can identify them, and the foremost weapon for achieving this is intelligence.

GCHQ’s men and women represent our best hope of keeping British society at least relatively safe from murderous Islam

The West is fortunate enough to possess extraordinary technology for electronic surveillance, for tracking jihadis, terrorists, ISIS cells – call them what you will – both in the Middle East and here in Britain.

Whereas once the first line of our defence was made up of Spitfires and Hurricanes, today our safety chiefly depends on the skills of GCHQ, the lineal descendant of wartime Bletchley Park, and of the Secret Intelligence Service at Vauxhall Cross.

Since 2001, it is their achievement, assisted by MI5 and the police, to have thwarted a success of jihadi plots inside Britain.

The West is fortunate enough to possess extraordinary technology for electronic surveillance, for tracking jihadis, terrorists, ISIS cells - call them what you will - both in the Middle East and here in Britain

They cannot pinpoint ‘lone-wolf’ attackers such as the Tunisian killer appears to have been, but they work miracles against many organised groups.

Their task has been made more difficult by the revelations from Moscow of the American traitor Edward Snowden, who has alerted the world’s terrorists to their vulnerability to eavesdropping.

As a consequence of the Snowden disclosures, Islamists have adopted tighter security methods, and the civil liberties lobby on both sides of the Atlantic has launched a headlong attack on ‘government snoopers’.

The internet lies at the heart of much, if not most modern terrorist activity, yet such service providers as Google have become increasingly unwilling to give intelligence agencies, and explicitly British ones, information about their users.

With reckless disregard for any civic responsibility, they offer customers apps which enable them to encrypt their communications.

Most of the purchasers are lawful customers who wish to protect their own privacy, but they are also being exploited by terrorists, criminals and paedophiles.

Today our safety chiefly depends on the skills of GCHQ, the lineal descendant of wartime Bletchley Park (pictured), and of the Secret Intelligence Service at Vauxhall Cross

ISIS cells across the Middle East have become enthusiastic users of encryption technology. Google and its counterparts, overwhelmingly US-based, place the claims of personal and customer rights ahead of the safety of Western society, a crazy distortion of values.

Britain’s intelligence agencies have frustrated many plots here since 2001, but they recognise that sooner or later one of them will succeed.

MI5 and its European counterparts lack resources to track all the young Muslims identified as potentially dangerous, and it would be unrealistic to expect them to do so.

Britain’s intelligence agencies have frustrated many plots here since 2001, but they recognise that sooner or later one of them will succeed

The perpetrators of both the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris and last week’s beheading of a French company boss were on the books of French intelligence as prospective terrorists, but if all such people were rounded up they would swamp the prisons of Europe.

Securing our safety at home and abroad requires a balance between human rights, personal privacy and government scrutiny.

Government electronic surveillance has now become so central to our security that it seems essential to recognise its priority, the fact that it has become the modern equivalent of the old beat policeman.

Judges in recent years have displayed naivete, even folly, in asserting personal rights over national security.

It is scarcely surprising that the intelligence services are uneasy about the proposal in the report to government this month by David Anderson QC, that members of the judiciary should exercise powers of independent supervision over SIS, MI5 and GCHQ.

A rogue judge granted such licence could delight the Guardian newspaper by adopting a tough line towards government surveillance, but do untold harm to our safety.

The perpetrators of both the Charlie Hebdo massacre (pictured) in Paris and last week’s beheading of a French company boss were on the books of French intelligence as prospective terrorists

We must be realistic, and thus frankly pessimistic, about the short-term outlook for suppressing ISIS both at home and abroad.

Many Islamic communities around the world are infected by the plague virus of fanaticism, and make converts among young men troubled by the freedoms of Western society, and themselves often unsuccessful in competing on its terms.

Alongside the security attack on terrorism, we need much more imaginative and energetic action to address it at source, by fighting radicalisation in our own cities.

Millions of British tourists will travel abroad this summer, enjoy happy holidays and come home safely.

We must sustain vigilance at home and abroad, and aid the intelligence services by rejecting the siren voices of foolish lobbyists who question their integrity and seek to constrain their work

But the more exotic the location, and the closer to a Muslim hub, the more peril Westerners will face.

The terrorists’ objective is to deepen the cultural gulf between Muslims and Westerners by spreading hate and fear. It is impossible to provide local protection for tourists everywhere.

We must sustain vigilance at home and abroad, and aid the intelligence services by rejecting the siren voices of foolish lobbyists who question their integrity and seek to constrain their work.

If GHCQ and America’s National Security Agency are unable by electronic means to pinpoint jihadis, who else is going to find them before they kill people?

No Islamist plotter has yet been spotted by Sergeant Plod from a police patrol car, nor by neighbours peering through binoculars.

GCHQ’s men and women, descendants of the eggheads of Bletchley Park, represent our best hope of keeping British society at least relatively safe from murderous Islam.

If we keep our nerve and display a little courage, the longer-term prospect is brighter. ISIS is a death cult which offers its followers nothing plausible save blood.

Its vacuity and futility will eventually become plain to young Muslims. The Islamists have no Luftwaffe, no ballistic missiles, thank goodness.

We are stronger and cleverer than they are, though they will cause us many more tears, much more heartache, before we shall witness their eclipse.